The changes I made were to halve the recipe and use 2 oz melted semi-sweet chocolate in place of what should have been 3 oz chocolate syrup. The cake was good enought to serve, but it wasn’t as moist as it could have been and I couldn’t really taste the malt. Maybe mine just didn’t have enough liquid to keep it moist? I’m not sure, but this recipe sounds like such a good one that I’d like to give it another chance.

If you make it or have already made it, I’d like to hear your thoughts……..or else I’m going to have to make it again myself with the chocolate syrup.

Anna,
I use RLB’s mixing method for all my cakes now and I get superb results. This pound cake recipe, however, is not sweet enough. I find that to be a problem with many of her recipes. Sugar reacts as a liquid and contributes to a moist and tender texture in cakes. So I use her method for my Mary Jo Bowen cake and get the best of everything. It also requires fewer bowls.

Speaking of good pics, I made the King Arthur fudge brownies from one of your Top 10 lists because they look so good in your picture. I haven’t really tried them yet because I’m bringing them to a tailgate tomorrow, but they look so fudgy!

I’m glad you posted about this cake, I have the book and have thought about making it, now I’ll hold off, at least until you try it again with better results! Oddly I have not made a single thing out of that book. Not sure why.

That marble cake really is beautiful and so symmetrical! Maybe he purposely made it dry because that’s what he likes. I’ve noticed people always have different ideas about what food is supposed to taste like because that’s what they’ve always had.

Beth, thanks for the link to Joe’s photo. Judging by his photo, I can tell that the crumb of his is exactly the same as mine. He mentioned the malt flavor was mild. I could taste the malt, but barely. All it did was add this “different” quality to the cake. Joe’s cake looks spectacular! He didn’t mention the chocolate marble as being too sweet, so that’s good. One of my reasons for not using the syrup was I feared it would be too sweet.

I have made this cake before, and have to concur that it wasn’t all that moist. I followed the recipe exactly. The texture was like a pound cake, but dry in the mouth. It wasn’t crumbly, but didn’t have a pleasant feeling in the mouth. It would have been better along-side a scoop of ice cream or maybe with some sort of drizzle, but I didn’t find it that great. I didn’t think the chocolate came through at all, and found the malt flavor lacking. I even waited several hours before trying it out–as recommended.